Bowen sat back in his chair, grinning sadistically, to savor the climax of his story.
'The ball bearing rolls along the test tube, touches both points of the needles, completes the circuit, and karaboom! blows the guy's head clean off his fucking shoulders.'
Kate caught Bowen's eye and smiled thinly as he and the rest of the guys in the room laughed some more at that.
'The crime scenes investigation unit spent forty-five minutes looking for Bolivar's head. They were beginning to think one of those Colombians must have taken it for a fucking souvenir when they found it floating in the goddamn aquarium. The blast had carried it right across the room, like a basketball.' Bowen pretended to make a basket. 'Field goal, two points.'
He cackled some more, wiped a tear from his eye and thinking of another wisecrack, said:
'Now that's what I call a really mind-blowing picture.'
Bowen guffawed loudly and helped himself to a glass of water, like he'd just told a really funny story on Jay Leno. Balding and fiftyish he reminded Kate a lot of Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now. He had the same kind of hard-ass attitude to the enemy and the same love of his staff. As soon as she started to speak she felt like the guy who wouldn't surf at Kilgore's beach party.
'Bolivar Suarez's assassination--' she began.
'Hey, what has two asses and no head?' chuckled Bowen. 'The assassination of Bolivar Suarez.'
'Since his death would seem to leave Rocky Envigado as Miami's undisputed Citizen Cocaine,' she persisted, 'it may be that we need look no further than that particular quarter when searching for a perp.'
'One way of getting your head round modern art,' said someone else and Bowen found himself trying to keep a straight face in the presence of Kate Furey's more businesslike demeanor.
'Citizen Cocaine,' Bowen repeated. 'I like that. Did you think of it yourself?'
'No, I think I read it in a British newspaper,' she explained, aware that she could easily have got away with claiming it for herself. There were times, she knew, when she could be too honest, even by the standards of the FBI. 'When I was on vacation there last year.'
The one and only time she had been outside the States, and the last good time she had enjoyed with Howard. And yet it had been a vacation only in part. The main purpose of her trip to London and Paris had been to visit with British and French police forces who were worried about the amount of cocaine now arriving in Europe
from Colombia, via Florida. But after Miami it had seemed like a vacation.
'Sorry,' she said, 'I mean when I was visiting with NCIS and Interpol.'
'Aha,' grinned Bowen. 'Now we learn the truth, Agent Furey. You were holidaying at the expense of the American taxpayer.'
Kate smiled politely and hoped that they could get on with the meeting in progress. Its purpose was to share new intelligence about drug traffickers who used South Florida as an entrepot for their activities. Information received from other agencies, at home and abroad. Now that Kent Bowen had told his story she could table what she had learned and then maybe go home and soak in the tub. It had been a long day.
'I had lunch with Peter van der Velden today and--'
'How is Dutch?'
Van der Velden was a detective inspector with Holland's BVD, on a two-year attachment as special liaison officer at the Netherlands Consulate in Miami.
'He's fine.'
'Go somewhere nice?'
'Don't worry, he paid.'
'I bet I know where you went. That place in Coral Gables. Le Festival. Dutch loves that place.'
'Yes, Le Festival.' She felt herself coloring a little as she made her reluctant admission.
'Is that good?' This was Special Agent Chris Ochao, a half-Cuban guy with his arm in a sling.
'Excellent,' said Bowen. 'Best souffles in town.' He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively and added: 'Romantic too.'
'Can't say as I noticed,' said Kate.
'No?'
Someone sniggered.
Kate looked Bowen squarely in the eye. She knew it was generally suspected around the office that she was having an affair with Peter van der Velden. Every year all the liaison officers from the various consulates in Miami got together and hosted a party at the Doubletree Hotel in Coconut Grove. It was only two or three months since the last one, at which Kate had been seen leaving with the Dutch policeman after talking with him alone for almost an hour.
'Y'know, I think there's something I ought to clear up,' she said, smiling coolly. 'A little misunderstanding I know's been going around. Just for the record, I am not fucking Peter van der Velden. Nor have I ever fucked Peter van der Velden. Nor do I have any intention of fucking or being fucked by Peter van der Velden. Moreover our lunch appointment was not made for the purpose of his suggesting that he might get to fuck me, but that we might come together in a spirit of co-operation and diplomacy and get to fuck some major-league drug traffickers and bad guys. Do I make myself clear?' She looked from one end of the table to the other. Nobody said anything for a moment.
'Everyone got that?' said Bowen. 'OK Kate, you made your point. What is it that you were going to tell us about Peter van der Velden before you were interrupted?'
'Just this,' she said, pleased no one in the room had cottoned onto the occasional relationship she was actually having with the British liaison officer, Nick Hemmings. 'Peter's sources tell him that they're expecting a big shipment from Rocky Envigado. And get this. It's coming up from Mallorca, same as before.'
'Meaning?' Bowen was frowning now.
Kate took a deep breath.
'Meaning last time we must have missed it.'
'Yeah, well, if we missed it, so did the Spanish police and so did the Dutch,' said Ochao. 'We searched that boat from top to bottom. There was nothing.'
'Could be that Rocky has discovered a new way of transporting the stuff,' said Bowen. 'A way we don't yet know about.'
'Maybe he's doing it on the Internet,' suggested another agent. 'Seems like that's all that's obsessing people these days.'
'I want us to get scientific here,' said Bowen. 'Quantico. National Crime Information Center. The Smithsonian. Back issues of the Law Enforcement Bulletin if you have to. With all the resources at our command we ought to be able to come up with some ideas.'
Bowen stood up and tried to look inspiring to his people. It seemed easy enough until he met Kate's doubtful stare.
'Problem, Kate?'
'It might be that there really was nothing last time. That he used that first trip as a way of embarrassing us. After that little debacle maybe he thinks now we'll leave him alone. But either way we ought to try and find the boat before we do anything, don't you think?'
'Well sure, that goes without saying, doesn't it?' He placed a carefully avuncular hand on Kate's shoulder. 'Take charge of the landing party, Mister Spock. I want some answers.'
Kate drove home in her white Sebring, fixed herself a rum punch, drank it while running her bath, and then fixed herself another before soaking in the hot water. The bathroom gave onto the wrap-around terrace and she left the blinds up so she could see across the intercoastal waterway to the winking lights of the Miami Riviera beyond. It was a big sunken tub with a Jacuzzi and just about her favorite spot in the whole apartment. A couple of times after she and Howard had taken the place they had shared a tub together. But mostly he preferred a shower and if he did take a bath he liked to have it to himself. After a while she got used to the idea that he generally took advantage of her extended sessions in the tub to lie in bed and watch the Playboy Channel on cable. He pretended he didn't of course and would switch onto Letterman or Leno the minute she came back into the bedroom. Not that she had minded him watching it very much. But what really did surprise and irritate her was that he must have believed he could take out a subscription to any new channel, let alone Playboy, and that somehow she wouldn't notice. She worked for the FBI, for Christ's sake. Noticing things was her job. Naturally she had known that he was having affairs almost as soon as it started happening. She had hoped that he might get whatever it was out of his system. Just as long as none of it got into hers. But what finally prompted her to take action was not jealousy, nor even her love for Howard but, like the Playboy Channel subscription, the irritation she experienced at being considered too stupid to see through his lies and evasions. She was the bright one, not him. Second in her class in law at the University of Florida in Gainsville, graduating with honors, this was the same class in which her future husband had struggled to make the top fifty, and still the bastard figured he could outsmart her, like she was the dumbest short-order waitress in Oklahoma.